The UK Government is setting up a job centre league table and will give £250 bonuses to staff who get the most people into work.
It is part of a pilot scheme in 60 job centres aiming to get more Universal Credit claimants into employment.
The government said it is right to reward staff when they help people secure work.
But the PCS union said the scheme was "gimmicky".
According to an internal Department for Work and Pensions document seen by the BBC, officials want to test whether financial incentives for job-centre teams "drive better outcomes".
Staff will be set targets, or what the document calls "into work stretch aspirations".
Top-performing
Employees at the top-performing job centres each month will receive £250. The next best performing staff will get £125 each.
The pilot will also make it compulsory for Universal Credit claimants who have been on the benefit for 13 weeks, to visit a job centre every weekday for a fortnight for "intensive support". Failure to attend could lead to sanctions.
One internal document says that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Mel Stride, has asked that the pilot "apply more mandatory activities to increase movement into work". It said this should be delivered within the existing budget and be "able to be scaled quickly".
The department says the 13-week mark is critical because it is the point at which a claimant's prospects of moving into work decreases significantly.
At present, Universal Credit claimants normally only meet with a work coach once a week for the first three months and once a fortnight after that.
But the PCS union’s Martin Cavanagh said the pilot would increase the likelihood of claimants being sanctioned due to missed appointments.
Poverty risk
He said the government was ''hell-bent on making it more difficult for people to claim benefits" and warned the pilot would increase the risk of poverty for job seekers who fell foul of it.
"Asking more customers to travel more often into job centres does nothing to help our staff or their workloads,'' he added.
There are currently 1.3 million unemployed people in the UK and a further nine million who are economically inactive which means they are neither in work nor looking for work.
Ministers are concerned that economic inactivity could hold back economic growth.